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Nicole Smigiel introduced her son to the neighborhood last night - 17 months after bearing him in secrecy. "This is my baby - Travis Christian," the 18year-old mother told the crowd welcoming her home with the child, who until now has lived his life as Mitchell Steinberg. She did not say how she chose the name.
Nearly 75 well-wishers crowded the street in Massapequa Park, L.I., to cheer her arrival, just hours after a justice of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that the adoptive parents, who have been charged in the death of 6-year-old Lisa Steinberg, had no right to block Smigiel's custody attempt.
"Joel Steinberg is being held in prison. Hedda Nussbaum is a patient in a mental hospital," Presiding Justice Francis T. Murphy wrote in his decision. "It does not lie in their mouths to question the custody of the child . . ."
The decision came one week after Lisa, who died from a severe beating, was buried by her natural mother, Michele Launders, who stepped forward years after giving her child up for adoption. Steinberg and Nussbaum had said that they adopted the children, but adoption papers were apparently never filed in court.
In denying their request, Murphy pointed out that Mitchell was found in the couple's Greewich Village apartment Nov. 2 "soaked in urine,...